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Zusatztext "This is a book not just for Japan specialists! but for anyone interested in a history of cosmopolitism and modern life." Informationen zum Autor Miriam Silverberg is Professor of History at the University of California! Los Angeles and the author of Changing Song: The Marxist Manifestos of Nakano Shigeharu (1990). Klappentext "A sumptuously documented book! one that makes innovative use of the principle of montage to generate informative historical readings of Japan's myriad mass cultural phenomena in the early twentieth century. Both in terms of its scholarship and its methodology! this is a truly admirable work."-Rey Chow! Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities! Brown University "As Miriam Silverberg has brilliantly shown here! the modern times of 1920s and '30s Japan were rendered in a cacophony of cultural mixing: a period of consumerist desires and Hollywood fantasy-making but also the rise of nationalist empire-building. Excavating its kaleidoscope of everyday culture Silverberg astutely offers a theory of montage for how Japanese subjects 'code-switched' in juggling the mixed cultural/political elements of these times. Utilizing a montage of media! texts! sites! and scholarship! Silverberg leads the reader into the terrain of the 'erotic grotesque nonsense' in a work that is as scintillating as it is theoretically important."-Anne Allison! author of Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination "Unlike other scholars who merely view ero-guro-nansensu in its literal meanings! Silverberg brilliantly documents it as a complex cultural aesthetic expressed in a spectrum of fascinating mass culture forms and preoccupations. With great erudition and humor! she traces the sensory and conceptual modes that are animated with potency and sophistication through this cultural metaphor. This book is destined to be a classic in Japan scholarship."-Laura Miller! author of Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics Zusammenfassung Presents the history of Japanese mass culture during the decades preceding Pearl Harbor. This work argues that the new gestures, relationship, and humor of ero-guro-nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense) expressed a self-consciously modern ethos that challenged state ideology and expansionism. Inhaltsverzeichnis List of Illustrations By Way of a Preface Acknowledgments Introduction PART I. JAPANESE MODERN TIMES Japanese Moddern within Modernity PART II. JAPANESE MODERN SITES 1. The Modern Girl as Militant (Movement on the Streets) 2. The Café Waitress Sang the Blues 3. Friends of the Movies (From Ero to Empire) 4. The Household Becomes Modern Life PART III. ASAKUSA-HONKY-TONK TEMPO 1. Asakusa Eroticism 2. Down-and-Out Grotesquerie 3. Modern Nonsense List of Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index ...
